Vehicle

Review

The car is a blast to drive. On smooth pavement it's like being in a bank vault, but bumps in the road will cause a fair amount of noise in the cabin. The clutch was tricky at first, but after I got used to it, there were no more problems. You don't have to worry about merging into traffic with this car. The torque of the engine also means infrequent shifts, even in heavy traffic. My biggest problem so far has been going faster than I intended.

Best Features

Acceleration and handling are great. I enjoy the ergonomics, too. The steering wheel controls may not operate all of the stereo's features, but it contols the most important ones. The car is comfortable on long drives.

Worst Features

While the car retains the fold-down rear seat of the other versions of the Mazda6, it doesn't have the release hardware, probably because of the extra bracing used in the Speed6. Mazda should have it set up for at least a pass-through.